7/8 Open Thread

Just a few things to share. Please add what’s perking your interest in comments!

The G20 in Hamburg has been quite intense. The name of yesterday’s protests, ‘Welcome to hell’ notwithstanding, most protestors were peaceful: pro-refugee, pro-environment, a fair number of anti-capitalists with a sub-group of provocateurs-some of them those all-in-black young men with masks we’ve come to expect, lighting some cars on fire (20 or so), and throwing some rocks at bank windows.

Here’s a pic of protestors being hit with water cannons. The protestors were told that they were not allowed to block transit routes:

A day of violent clashes between police and protesters culminated on Friday evening with the bizarre spectacle of the heads of the world’s 20 leading economies listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the top of a shiny high-rise building while police used water cannon, teargas and speed boats to keep at bay an angry crowd of thousands.

Germany’s second-largest city had been eager to showcase its recently opened Elbphilharmonie concert hall to the rest of the world, but it may come to rue its ivory-tower symbolism after a week of chaotic scenes on the edges of the conference hall.

Then there’s the latest awful thing coming from Trump’s people, something that the anti-capitalists in Hamburg may have an opinion about:

“Treasury intends to propose reforms—potentially ranging from streamlining problematic rule provisions to full repeal—to mitigate the burdens of these regulations in a final report submitted to the president,” Friday’s notice said. That final report is due by Sept. 18.

The debt regulations were part of the Obama administration’s attempt to address inversions, the corporate technique of putting a headquarters’ address outside a country. The rules, under Section 385 of the tax code, made it harder for companies to engage in the practice known as earnings stripping, in which they load up the U.S. operations with debt to reduce U.S. taxes. The rules affect other companies, including firms with headquarters overseas that aren’t inverted U.S. businesses.

“The whole idea of the 385 rules were, if you’re going to do intercompany loans, you should have a real bona fide loan,” said Mark Mazur, who led the regulatory effort as the Obama Treasury Department’s top tax policy official.

And, you know what? I think Chelsea has a good point!

since when do we wait for 2 party system when we have millions of mobilized people everywhere – our options are not limited here 👭👫👬🌈🌏🌍🌎 https://t.co/5dPUk1Q9y1

The Trump-Ryan-McConnell “health care” bill currently being pushed by Republicans in Washington is one of the worst pieces of legislation to ever pass the US House of Representatives in the modern history of our country. This legislation would throw 22 million Americans off of health insurance, cut Medicaid by almost $800 billion, significantly raise out-of-pocket health care costs, defund Planned Parenthood and do away with protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Meanwhile, it would provide $500 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent, insurance companies and drug companies.

I will do everything I can to defeat this bill.

But no matter the fate of this legislation, we must all recognize that the current health care system is totally inadequate. Premiums, deductibles and co-payments are too high and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Further, our primary health care system is totally inadequate. Tens of millions of Americans, including many with insurance, are unable to get to a doctor or a dentist when they need to.

In Vermont, we spend more than $5.5 billion on health care each year. Amazingly, this is an amount just about equal to the entire state budget. And of that amount, we spend over $2 billion in hospitals. That’s a lot of money. In my view, an aggressive emphasis on disease prevention and expanding the delivery of primary health care will not only keep Vermonters healthy, it will save substantial sums of money by keeping people out of emergency rooms and hospitals.

Ask any doctor or nurse and they will tell you this: having reliable access to high-quality primary health care is a big part of what keeps people healthy. That’s because primary care providers are the first line of defense in health — they work to promote healthy habits that prevent disease and manage diseases so they don’t become more serious. That’s exactly the kind of care provided at Vermont’s Federally Qualified Health Centers each and every day.

In another gift to big polluters, Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke signed an order Thursday directing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to hold quarterly oil and gas lease sales and to issue new oil and gas drilling permits within only 30 days from application.

The move is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to allow dirty oil and gas polluters to dominate public lands that belong to the American people.

The oil and gas industry doesn’t need any more special favors or giveaways. The fossil fuel industry has received taxpayer handouts for decades.

The BLM already makes the vast majority of federal lands available for oil and gas development. For example, BLM has classified more than 90 percent of lands it manages in 11 western states as available for oil and gas leasing. In contrast, conservation proposals have historically had to overcome greater institutional hurdles, and renewable energy projects on federal lands face much more stringent environmental standards than oil and gas development.

Zinke’s quest for faster permitting ignores the fact that delays are often the fault of industry and operators, not the BLM. From FY 2005 to FY 2015, it took operators an average of 133 days to resolve deficiencies in permit applications they filed with BLM, according to the Center for American Progress.

“We know Paul Ryan’s plan to rip health care away from 22 millions Americans is from the 1920s. But it seems his ideas about women’s attire also harken back to a another era. Perhaps, like many with outdated ideas about women, he should be retired by voters in 2018,” said Myers.

“Nearly every woman knows what it’s like to be shut out of opportunities because of regulations that disproportionately affect them compared to men. Paul Ryan’s oppressive dress code for the U.S. House of Representatives is just one more of his policies that makes it harder for women to have power over their own lives — the power to afford quality healthcare, to plan our own families, and now even to be able to just do our jobs. If the sight of shoulders keeps him from doing his job, then I will be happy to do it for him.”

According to CBS News, women — including reporters, lawmakers and staff — are required to cover their toes and shoulders while in both the House chamber and the Speaker’s lobby. As U.S. News and World Report notes, the dress code has been in effect for decades and applies to men as well, requiring them to wear suit jackets and ties in order to enter those areas. The dress code has been enforced in the past and apparently is once again being enforced. At least three reporters have confirmed that their outfits were deemed “unacceptable” in recent days and they were issued a warning that should they violate dress code again, they would be removed from the chamber.

It sounds a lot like the dress code in court. This story tells of her law school years when their appearances, as well as mannerisms, would be critiqued by their professors. No distracting patterns or hoop earrings, but make-up, heels, skirt suits a must. Complying with dress codes can be even more challenging for gay women:

As a queer female lawyer, I have to perform gendered professionalism all day, every day.

This performance of gendered professionalism, and our participation in it, reinforces the confines of the gender binary and limits the space for our trans and gender-nonconforming colleagues. Choosing to excise our queerness from the courtroom reinforces the idea that everyone should be able to at least appear straight and cisgender in court, and that is an expectation that many people cannot — or will not — meet. Participating in made-up rules about hair and makeup also reinforces the systemic racism that consistently undervalues lawyers of color.

Here is the other consideration, though: Short hair makes Amanda feel good about herself, and that confidence makes her a better lawyer. Dressing like someone you are not takes an emotional toll

I rarely wear makeup and often feel pressure to comform in my daily life. Even my best friend will ask me if she can make me up sometimes. When I do wear make-up I do it for those who have to look at me, lol. People, men and women, seem to prefer women to look ‘pretty’. (So on goes the mascara, eyeliner & concealer when I have it in me)

I hated wearing corporate clothing when I worked in that environment. Especially when I worked in the finance department of a large corporation where, at the time, the dress code was implicit and required. I’m fortunate that hubby likes me just the way I am, blemishes and all. 😉

Funny it depends, on the gal I guess , ive told the Mrs when we go some where at the last minute and that she looks fine the way she is , but usally heads to the mirror to I guess “touch up here and there” I leave it to her though i’ll never venture into that area of a womans life its a no fly zone for me 🙂

Nuclear weapons have threatened humanity for 72 years ultimately becoming the greatest eminent threat to our survival. This past Friday, July 7, nuclear weapons at long last joined the ranks of other weapons of mass destruction including biologic and chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions in being banned and declared illegal under international treaty law.

The U.N. adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Under Article 6 of the Treaty, states are prohibited from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, transferring, deploying, stationing, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, under any circumstances. It also makes it illegal to assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a state party under this treaty, extending the prohibitions to non-state actors as well.

While nuclear weapons still exist, any nation that violates the above conditions will now be in breach of international and humanitarian law and should be considered a pariah state and ultimately on the wrong side of history. As with other weapons of mass destruction, the weapons are usually banned and then subsequently eliminated. .

The United States has joined a small group of global outliers on Friday after a historic United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons was adopted by a majority of the world’s nations.

“The adoption of the nuclear weapons ban treaty marks an historic turning point in the centuries-old battle to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction,” said Jeff Carter, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Ahead of its adoption, Elayne Whyte Gómez, Coasta Rica’s ambassador to the U.N. and president of the United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, championed the “historic”agreement, calling it “the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years.”

Noting that the landmark moment comes 72 years after the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an editorial in Japan’s Mainichi said: “The international community’s firm determination not to repeat these tragedies is the linchpin of the convention.”

On September 9 of last year, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States and Russia had successfully worked together to negotiate a nationwide ceasefire in Syria, set to take effect September 12th, which was fully supported by the Syrian government. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that if the ceasefire lasted seven days, negotiations would begin for the US and Russia to begin collaborating against Al-Qaeda in the region.

On September 17th, five days after the ceasefire took effect, the US admitted that its drones had attacked the Syrian military, killing 62 soldiers and injuring 100 others, saying that it had mistaken them for ISIS fighters. UK and Australian air forces were also involved. The ceasefire was shattered and the bloodbaths resumed.

Since that time the US coalition has come under increasing criticism for its failure to take the fight to Al-Qaeda forces in the area, which saw Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard grilling Secretary of State James Mattis last month as to why the US has been targeting ISIS but not Al-Qaeda in Syria.

The Birth of Territory was published by University of Chicago Press in September 2013 in simultaneous cloth, electronic and paperback editions. Some of it is available to read on Google Books.

It was awarded the 2013 Association of American Geographers Meridian Book Award for ‘outstanding scholarly work in Geography’. It was also joint winner of the inaugural book award from the journal Global Discourse.

At the bottom of this is a link to a 8 minute Lego video explaining the book

About a year ago I learned from Bruno Latour that mapping was part of the colonial project. I had never thought about the politics of mapping and its tie to geography.

Thanks for the video about Amish resistance in PA to natural gas pipelines.

On another of Elden’s web pages he mentions his work on using Shakesphere to understand territory

The major writing task for the summer is to revise Shakespearean Territories. The revisions I need to make are important, but they are structural and explicative rather than requiring new research or reading. I am hoping that a few consolidated weeks of work in the first half of the summer will take care of this, and the plan is to resubmit the manuscript before I go on holiday.

Over the past several years I have been working on a project which uses a number of Shakespeare’s plays to think through various aspects of the question of territory.

In my previous books on territory – Terror and Territory and The Birth of Territory – I argued that as well as obviously being a geographical and political issue, territory should be understood through an interrogation of economic, strategic, legal and technical concerns. The aim of this approach was not to provide a better single definition of territory, but rather to identify the aspects which would need to be interrogated to understand how territory has been understood, contested and practiced in different times and places.

Shakespeare seems to me to be an interesting figure to use to explore these, and other questions in relation to territory. While he only uses the words ‘territory’ and ‘territories’ rarely in his plays, the concept and practice is not at all marginal to his work. A number of his plays are structured around questions of exile, banishment, land politics, spatial division, contestation, conquest and succession. Shakespeare was writing at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century: a time when the modern conception of sovereign territory was emerging. He therefore helps us understand its variant aspects, tensions, ambiguities and limits.

OK. The link works but since you can’t tell where it’s going from my typing it’s about a call for Cathy Myers to drop out of the race. ‘The other guy dropped out and endorsed Ironstasche, you should too Cathy.’ Don’t know if this is the opinion of one person, or many. Just thought it was interesting.

I agree as the Dem party in this state is weak and have “propped” up the last two Gov candidates and have “discouraged” competition behind the scenes in my opinion. They want “their” candidate WI-DNC
Hope I’m wrong though.

MIDDLETON – Democrats stood by Martha Laning on Saturday, re-electing their statewide chairwoman to a second term despite their crushing defeats last fall.

Laning won another two years in her post after defeating Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy by 722 votes to 569. Madison lawyer Eric Finch received 50 votes and Joe Donovan, a retired small business owner, got 48 votes in the winner-take-all contest.

In speeches on Friday and Saturday, Laning acknowledged that “coming up short last year really hurt” but persuaded delegates not to give up on her plan to organize Democrats.

Despite Bernie’s overwhelming victory in the state Laning was a Hillary delegate.

Thx Humphrey, proves that Wi will be Red for years to come. “coming up short” HA!! you got your ass kicked in more ways than one and the WI DNC are perfectly willing to follow that perfect form of insanity of doing the same thing over and over an expecting a different result. Pro team owners would fire their whole management and coaching staffs with the record the DNC has. And you wonder why a lot of Wisconsinites refuse the join the Dem party or even bother to turn out to vote. They can even admit that Bernie kicked Hillarys ass and change is desperately needed at the top.

The year: 2019. The mission: Send combat forces into space to save the world from potential Star Wars.

The crew to get the job done: the United States Space Corps.
A Congressional committee is proposing that the US armed forces add a new military branch that would, quite literally, send soldiers out of this world.
US military prepares for the next frontier: Space war
US military prepares for the next frontier: Space war
The crew of real-life Buzz Lightyears is described in the National Defense Authorization Act, which is now headed to the full House for a vote.
There isn’t usually anything extraordinary about the NDAA, which every year lays out military spending.
But this time, the House Armed Services Committee voted 60 to 1 in favor of a bill that would, among many other things, create the first new branch of the armed forces since the Air Force’s founding in 1947.
Among the Space Corps’ official duties, as established in the bill, would be “providing combat-ready space forces that enable the commanders of the combatant commands to fight and win wars.”
The Space Corps would fall under the Air Force in the same way the Marine Corps does the Navy. The chief of staff of the Space Corps, a presidential appointee with a six-year term, would be on equal footing with the Air Force’s chief of staff. Both would report to the Secretary of the Air Force.

I would bet that their already a “space corps” under a black project in the air force’s budget. For some reason they want to go public with it now. I for a minute don’t believe when NASA pulled back from the shuttle flights that R&D didn’t stop in the Air Force. There’s been lot of Top secret stuff going on and up at Vandenberg and a couple other area concerning space flight and would bet its about new tech and the top secret militarization of space. I would speculate that their is a platform up their to take out anyone’s ICBM with laser or other type weapons. The high ground wins in this type of warfare a hand full of well placed platforms would be able to knock out any ICBM’s with ease. Its the nut job with a suitcase that’s the real worry. When Reagan started Star Wars initiative back in the 80’s they had some damn good results that were let public

Ive always figured that the US has had that type of program in place for a long time thru the Air Force or the Space command( Black opps of course). My question would be why go “public” now. Since NASA shuttle program drew to a close I doubt our space program just “Quit” space station not withstanding. Vandenberg AFB has been a busy place for black opps space flights and I speculate a few other places as well. I would think that the US would already have some satellites in orbit that would take out the ICBM if launched as the military already has released information about lasers being mounted in aircraft for high altitude defense. In any war the high ground wins and space is that high ground. Thiers more to worry about some nut job with a device in a suitcase.

NASA was created with funding from the Air Force and Navy. It was a cold war reaction to the successful launch of Sputnik. It consisted of 2 divisions: Manned and Unmanned. The fact that a boatload of knowledge for peaceful purposes also happened was almost accidental. It also had a tremendous amount of civilian employees which kept the R and D busy until the FRighties started cutting the budget with Nixon and then Raygun. T and R to the usual suspects!! 🙂

Hamburg (AFP) – US President Donald Trump won key concessions on climate and trade Saturday from world leaders at the most fractious G20 summit to date, in exchange for preserving the unity of the club of major industrialised and emerging economies.

In a final statement agreed by all 20 economies, 19 members including Russia, China and the European Union acknowledged Trump’s decision to go his own way on taking the US out of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

But they also accommodated Washington’s wish to “work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently”.

While renewing a key anti-protectionist pledge, the communique for the first time underlined the right of countries to protect their markets with “legitimate trade defence instruments”.

Such wording gives room for Trump to push on with his “America First” policy.

Been listening to Thom for well over a decade now (and thats where I first heard Bernie). I dont listen near as much and dont tend to agree with him near as often as I used to… but he’s still one of the best in the business and its a shame that RT is one of the only outlets to give him a platform.

The Trump administration appears to be making its first moves toward fulfilling a campaign promise to fill the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with “bad dudes.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the prison on Friday to get an update on current operations, the first concrete action the administration has taken on the facility since taking office.

Up until now, Guantanamo has been running on autopilot; the executive order from former President Obama calling for the facility to be shut down is still technically the law of the land.

But President Trump promised during the campaign to “load it up with some bad dudes,” and Sessions has called it a “very fine place” with no legal reason not to send new detainees there.

Bob Dole lauds Trump’s ‘successful’ European trip
Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) praised President Trump’s trip to Europe this week, calling his speech in Poland “one for the ages” and saying that Americans “should be proud” of his efforts.

In a statement released by the White House and touted on social media, Dole called Trump’s speech in Warsaw a “stirring articulation of the values and shared goals that bind us together with the Polish people and with millions of others around the world who seek to live in freedom.”

Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, also remarked on Trump completing “a number of critically important strategic meetings” at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

“Americans should be proud of the strong American leadership being restored by President Trump. More importantly they should be proud to live in a country that stands for the values he has so ably expressed, shared, and defended,” he said.